And now, it's hard not to think that the reins should be handed to someone who wants the job less -- and thus stands a better chance of getting it done before the entire country is sick to death of it.

Sounds like another job for Joyce. I've always been bemused by the way National's 'Prince of Darkness', strategic mastermind and media guru stumbles from one easily avoidable public relations disaster to the next.

1. Convicting the complainants in the Brooke case of concocting a rape complaint after the fact.

Which is actually a pretty serious offence -- and if you extend that a little further, as has happened in other cases, so is extortion and perjury. If Haden (and Michael Laws et. al.) doesn't know, or care, about defamation one might think the broadcasters who give his a platform would.

Anyway, Saturday night is what it is all about. Don't care where everyone else goes to party, cause my garage grandstand and a result like that in the final will make all this rubbish pale into insignificance. It was so comprehensive it makes me worry it would be hard to better.

Still things to improve. Cowan could stop getting his head in the way of the opposition players, and he could also pass the ball above the ground from time to time. No actually, I am truly struggling to think of serious areas we were poor in.

I am at a loss to understand why the Viaduct Events Centre, whose existence I was quite unaware of until Bernard Orsman's Herald story on Friday was not designated Party Central to start with. If the issue was the distance from the city's pulsing nerve centre at Britomart, what price two of those buses that ferry passengers across airport tarmacs when there is no airbridge room, running on endless shuttle from the Viaduct to the Ferry Building? A few hundred grand plus freight to hire a couple from Changi or Sydney? Am I missing something here?

It truly is astounding that after Crusaders/Darkie comments, someone didn't sit on Haden every time he went back on Deaker's show, or demand that he not do it if he wanted to remain an ambassador. Fool me once, fool me twice etc.

I resent Wellington quite frequently. Give me 6 months away from the place and I'll romanticise it quite happily. Two days there and I'm screaming to come north again where everyone is incompetantly normal and we're not living in some Anglo-Saxon chillwater state of middle-class civil-service consciousness. But with the Rugby World Cup (and notice how the next word comes so easily to the lips) fiasco, the Super City one, ditto, even Wellington is looking tempting.

I cannot believe the levels of incompetance repeatedly involved in both events. I'd love to blame Rodney but I can only blame him for half of it (and isn't the shit eventually gunna hit the fan for that tainted chalice of a Ministery). McCully and our blind-trusted multi-millionaire PM have to take some of the flak for the other half of what is increasing looking like a disaster in the making.

I do not like the fact that we are going to be saddled with major debt because of a botchedly organised sporting event. Part of me looks forward to the financial wash-up, to prove a point, part of me doesn't, because we are the ones who'll be paying, and for generations yet unborn. Just as I don't believe the National voters of Auckland are going to get rents of tens of thousands of dollars for their villas, I do not believe it is going to be a financial success for anyone apart from the vuvuzela sellers or that years equivalent.

So the sheds of Queen's Wharf are not the hill to die on. They are just not worth it. They are an eyesore. [...] I rented for a few months an apartment on Princes Wharf that overlooked them.

Because when you look upon the old sheds on Wellington's Queens Wharf, even on a good day they look a bit dull from above.

But while an aerial view of a building is somewhat important in these days of Sky Towers, highrise buildings and Google Earth, what's more important is what the building looks like on the ground. At a human scale. Because it's humans who will be using these buildings.

The more I look at Party Central, the more I am convinced Key announced the idea off the top of his head at the "opening" of the wharf, with little thought going into a politically expedient announcement designed with a 24 hour news cycle in mind.

Probably a more competent minister than McCully would have taken the PM's burblings to the audience and "investigated" it, before quietly dropping the idea a few months later on a Friday afternoon.

As for Haden - he is entirely entitled to freely express his opinions, God knows they are shared by enough of his fellow New Zealanders.

But if Andy Haden can't understand that when you are appointed in an official capacity as an ambassador you should moderate your public utterances is entirely his own fault.

Murray Deaker was doing his outraged old blokey thing routine about the "PC" brigade stitching up his "mate" on his Sunday show - but Deaker then also frankly admitted he got Haden onto his show because he says stupid shit that gets him his ratings. So in other words, Deaker knew exactly what he is doing. He set up Haden for the second time, knowing that all he had to do was hand good l' boy Andy the rope.

That there is a constituency in New Zealand that thinks – as it did the first time Haden let fly – that this is all a bunch of PC nonsense is no concern of Rugby World Cup 2011. But it is of political significance, in McCully's mind, to the government.

You nailed it. Rugby Racing and Beer culture is under threat if you back off defending it from political correctness even for a moment.Courtship in the youth of these yobs consisted of getting the dirty girls drunk enough to root. Its the tradition that alcohol advertising depends on. Sports radio and sports TV and the RWC depends on the brewery advertising dollar and McCully is petrified like a bunny in the headlights.

As for Haden - he is entirely entitled to freely express his opinions, God knows they are shared by enough of his fellow New Zealanders.

He's not free to accuse anyone of committing a pretty damn serious criminal offence. Perhaps I'm totally out of the mainstream of public opinion here, but I take a very dim view of false and malicious rape allegations and wouldn't accuse anyone of such a vile thing without being absolutely certain of my facts.

To be honest, Tom, I don't give a shit if Deaker was "setting up" Haden. He's a grown-up who has to take responsibility for his actions, and their consequences.

To be honest, Tom, I don't give a shit if Deaker was "setting up" Haden. He's a grown-up who has to take responsibility for his actions, and their consequences.

I disagree about your lack of interest in Murray Deaker. Deaker is as big a hypocrite as anyone he seeks to derride with anti-PC tirades.

Deaker professes to be Haden's mate - Murray Deaker is a man who has made his career running around preaching about homely old-time Kiwi virtues like mateship, accountability and honesty but he has come out of this looking like a mercenary creep who would sell his mate for 3 points in the ratings.

Notice the resemblance between the statements by Andy Haden & Owen McShane, and this blurt from a certain Sydney-based ayatollah:

"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

Since you mentioned the Red Gates I will mention my personal hobby-horse: Give the Red Gates and Fence to Motat. They need a better fence and are the natural home for a piece of Auckland's transport heritage.

I see Owen McShane, who stoutly defended Tony Veitch's right to buy his way out of a series of nasty assaults on his girlfriend, is at it again in Kiwiblog comments:Someone once said “An ambassador is someone who lies abroad for his country.”Andy obviously cannot be an Ambassador because he told the truth.It’s in the language for goodness sake – Rock Groupies, Star Fxxxxxs, Media whores etc etc.What a revolting little man he is.

The rest of the echo-chamber comments on KIwiblog are virtually identical and are exactly the type of criticism McCully was afraid of.

McCully and his spin-doctors harnessed this lot as part of their party political machine and are afraid of the backlash, that's why he dithers.

As for Haden having the highest profile. Well he has in the last couple of months. Maybe all publicity is good publicity in the eyes of Deaker, even when it's racist, sexist and bringing rugby players and the game itself into disrepute.

they seem to have a stable that includes some smart people (and a lot of weather presenters) one would hope would be embarrassed to now be seen in the same company as Haden and his neanderthal outlook......it won't happen overnight, but it will happen! ...and pity poor Hayley Westenra now he has pissed all over her pure image by association...

Magnifcent ignorance appears to be the rule with the right-wing commentators at the moment. Stephen Franks:

And if I were Bill English I'd cancel the folly of Auckland's 'party central', and save us all one day's borrowing from foreigners. How will Auckland fill a ghastly old shed on a distant waterfront when they can't muster more than 25,000 spectators for a game like that?

For goodness sake, there were 25,000 spectators because half the stadium is under construction and that's all that will fit. No sane person expects the park to be anything other than sold-out for the All Blacks' RWC matches. How stupid do you have to be to fail to grasp that?

If the issue was the distance from the city's pulsing nerve centre at Britomart, what price two of those buses that ferry passengers across airport tarmacs when there is no airbridge room, running on endless shuttle from the Viaduct to the Ferry Building? A few hundred grand plus freight to hire a couple from Changi or Sydney? Am I missing something here?

Political will and officer smarts.

With my elected rep hat on I say:

I was given, along with other ERs a presentation about this new shiny box down on the far side of the Viaduct. Shiny, boxy, glassy, new. I asked a simple question: how are people to get to there from say Britomart? (or anywhere along Queen St for that matter? I am elected to point these small things out)

Cue blinking eyes and a quick smooth 'don't worry there's that bridge that buses will run along.' (meaning Te Wero). I pointed out that that bridge will be bobbin' up and down like a yo-yo letting in and out boats into the inner viaduct. How will buses cope? No answer to this.

I didn't ask the following questions, but: Which buses? What are these buses? Is NZBus/Ritchies/Newmans/whatever going to be doing this as part of some contract? [disclaimer, I own shares in Infratil, that owns NZBus].

A) officers haven't thought that far ahead. As is usual with these things, something will be cobbled together at some point to plug this obvious gap.

B) there's a lack of political will that says yep, we'll pay for free buses to run say from 11am to 11pm every 15 minutes from Britomart along Fanshawe St to this Council-owned shiny new box, during events (which could include RWC2011).